HERON Annual Report – 1998/99
Carolyn Rowlinson, Project Director
1. Introduction
2. Progress against milestones
3. Major activities undertaken and significant outputs in Year 1
4. Learning from the process of implementation.
5. Future development of HERON
Appendix 1 HERON staff in Year 1
Acknowledgements:
The HERON staff are most grateful for the support and advice of members of the Project Board, the Project Advisers and Blackwell’s sponsor.
The HERON Project began work in August 1998. Broadly, the project proposes to:
The project is a consortium of both HEI partners - University of Stirling as lead site, Napier University (Edinburgh) and South Bank University (London) – and Blackwell Retail as a commercial partner. Funding is from JISC and Blackwell’s.
HERON followed SCOPE and PHOENIX, previous eLib Projects. Therefore, a number of staff transferred to HERON, but it was also necessary to employ a number of new staff to work on the project. The table in Appendix 1 shows the staff from each partner working on HERON.
2. Progress against milestones
After some revision to originally proposed timescales, the broad HERON milestones were as shown below. Comments are given regarding each milestone where this is relevant.
2.1 Year 1: August 1998 – July 1999
An initial plan was submitted to, and approved by, the first meeting of the HERON Board in September 1998. Detailed plans for each of the functional groups (Copyright, Marketing and Technical) followed, and were submitted to the next meeting of the Board in December. The Project Plan, together with an evaluation plan, was submitted to JISC in March 1999.
The first demonstration of a prototype HERON access system was given at a HERON team meeting in Oxford in early December, followed by a shorter presentation at the meeting of the HERON Board in December 1998. After these demonstrations, the business logic prototype version of the system was released to team members in modules for their feedback. As a result, some revisions were made to the system, and the first usable prototype was demonstrated at a workshop for representatives of partner institutions held at Napier University in June 1999.
It was planned that the three partner sites (Stirling, Napier and South Bank) would be the first HE institutions to receive a service through HERON. However, due to early uncertainties over when copyright clearance could start, these institutions are now unlikely to require delivery of texts before January 2000.
2.2 Year 2: August 1999 – July 2000
With regard to the wider list of test sites, the Universities of Huddersfield, Derby, Bangor, Newcastle and Birmingham have already requested delivery for the start of the new academic year, and have submitted reading lists to indicate required texts and page ranges.
In addition to these institutions (and the partner sites), a number of other institutions have also expressed interest in HERON (see Section 5 below).
It is now planned that, working within available resources, HERON can take membership from approximately 20 test institutions (including partners). Therefore, the real launch of service could be seen to be Autumn 1999 (when non-partners are first involved) rather than January 2000.
A formal request is being sent to each of these institutions asking them to become test sites, and outlining what they can expect from HERON in terms of service and what HERON will expect of them in terms of evaluation.
Although originally envisaged as a Year 2 development, the ability for users to customise and order recommended reading electronically is already a part of the HERON prototype access system.
3. Major activities undertaken and significant outputs in Year 1
There are two significant factors which have helped the project through the first year.
These are:
There have been a number of significant areas of work during Year 1. These include the following:
At the September ’98 Project Board meeting, members agreed that the development of the HERON access system by Blackwell’s should be taken in stages, allowing enhancement as justified by market demand. The current version of the system is expected to support activity by 20 HEIs. Although it is not considered to be of industrial strength, users may customise and order readings online – a design feature originally considered for year 2.
The prototype version of the HERON access system has been demonstrated to both representatives of partner institutions and to members of the Board. It was very well received at the Workshop for partner’s representatives, most of whom were working librarians. The system can now be delivered to those institutions who become HERON members, and, dependent on resources available, improvements will be made after feedback on the first year’s use.
The Technical Unit has been developing procedures for digitisation and procurement of clean original material. Arrangements are being set up with the British Library’s Document Supply Centre at Boston Spa. In addition, an index to catalogue the resource bank has been built utilising Active Server technology. The following work was also undertaken:
The CLA announced its intention to licence retrodigitisation just before the HERON project started. During Summer ’98 SCOPE staff (later to join HERON) participated in the CLA consultation exercise and can claim to have had had some influence on the terms of the licence, particularly with regard to formats and delivery conditions. Before Autumn it became clear that the CLA and HERON (as well as NESLI) were preparing to beat simultaneously on publishers’ doors, and it was agreed that it could be counterproductive for HERON to enter into direct competition with the major UK Representative Rights Organisation (RRO), when in fact both would be seeking agreement on very similar licence conditions.
Accordingly, it was agreed that HERON should collaborate with the CLA, and concentrate on securing mandates outside the CLA’s sphere of operations – for instance for original electronic text, and for rights from overseas publishers. HERON would act as an agent of the CLA (although initially each clearance would have to be authorised by the CLA itself through HERON); the CLA would undertake financial transaction processing, including streaming royalties back to authors as well as publishers. HERON would also be indemnified by the CLA in respect of action relating to the digitisation, delivery or use of texts which it itself had cleared. Finally, HERON would become a Trusted Repository, enabling it to build up content more quickly. The repository would be seen as a working resource bank, and not as a preservation archive. HERON would not store materials such as runs of journals which would be readily obtainable elsewhere.
A draft Heads of Agreement is currently before lawyers. It represents only the first stage of negotiation and collaboration. It is important to agree more precisely what a Trusted Repository should be: there are both threats and opportunities for HERON.
We regard it as vital that HERON deals directly with publishers,
A seminar on HERON sponsored by eLib and held at the Policy Studies Institute in June ’98 was attended by some 60 rightsholders. Their reactions were generally positive.
HERON was marketed at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 1998 and was successfully received at the On-Line Exhibition in London in November. Initial meetings were set up with targeted publishers and all were sent HERON information starter packs containing Q&A sheets and detailed information about the project. A mixed reaction concerning the project was received from publishers but on the whole, positive and encouraging feedback was relayed and the majority seemed enthusiastic to utilise the project as a new marketing and promotional tool.
Throughout the year, follow-up communication has been maintained with most publishers, and reports have been completed on RROs to explore a method of dealing with foreign publishers.
A draft HERON mandate for publishers is currently being considered by lawyers; in the meantime clearances outside the scope of the CLA are being handled on a one-off transactional basis.
Following investigation of current and developing (including IMS) standards, it was decided to incorporate Dublin Core Version (DC)1 elements into the HERON catalogue. These fields will not be available to the public, but will allow DC compliant catalogue records to be supplied with reading materials, should HEIs require them.
The Strategy Report covers the results of two market surveys; material providers identified and incorporates guidelines for submitting texts to HERON, metadata requirements, IPR strategy, a Schedule for HEI providers to be included with the HERON Licence and a marketing plan for the Service.
South Bank’s Distance Learning Centre has prepared Health material to be incorporated into the HERON Test Service and will be the first to offer their own texts to the HE market place via the HERON Service.
Responses to the planned service have been very favourable from both potential users and providers and the service should be able to offer teaching staff an innovative and alternative text resource by December 99.
Collection of market research information, and dissemination of information about HERON to other interested parties took a variety of forms during the year.
Monash University Library school students working at Blackwell’s in Summer ’98 compared data on short loan collections and multiple copy holdings at a number of universities. This enabled the identification of target publishers. While this study was limited and did not suggest great overlap in all of the key subject areas selected (business, health, sociology, politics and media), we believe that reuse of digital text will increase partly through substitution and partly as a result of pressure from the Funding Councils for collaboration in teaching across HEIs.
HERON initially had a target list of 30 institutions, to whose Chief Librarians questionnaires were sent. Response to the questionnaire was very good (22/30), and gave the team useful information on which to begin to model the service.
As part of the marketing effort, a number of institutions were visited during the year. These were:
University of Derby (staff also visited the HERON offices)During these visits, the concept of HERON was explained, and details of the service were given to potential member institutions. A number of these visits have resulted in firm orders or expressions of interest in HERON. Several have previously been involved in eLib on-demand and electronic reserve projects, while one is an eLib hybrid library site.
A database of approximately 13,000 records has been set up from information contained within reading lists submitted to Blackwell’s bookstores. This provides useful information for:
The journal articles that have been written this year have helped to ensure HERON’s high profile. (Details of these articles can be found in Appendix 4, attached).
HERON has also been both the subject of a number of presentations given at conferences and has been represented on Blackwell’s stand at several exhibitions. (Details of these conferences and exhibitions can be found in Appendix 3, attached).
4. Learning from the process of implementation.
There have been a number of critical developments:
These developments have led to much debate on the precise nature of the HERON product and have contributed greatly to the difficulty in building an appropriate business model. For current thinking, see section 5.
Formation of a company had always been a possible part of the exit strategy after the 3-year lifetime of the project. However, lawyers recommended the desirability of forming a company as soon as the project got beyond the test phase, originally expected by December 1999. This arose primarily from the need for Stirling, as the HE lead site and potential holder of licences for HERON, to limit its liability. Much debate ensued on the nature of the company and the matter was finally resolved in June, when it was decided that HERON would work on a project basis for the remainder of the 3 year period, and that Blackwell’s would hold the licences for the HERON consortium, with the risk being covered under their existing insurances. To have diverted even further time and effort to company formation and business modelling in the critical early stages of the project could have been seriously detrimental to the service.
Staff working on HERON are based in four geographical locations (Oxford, London, Edinburgh and Stirling). In addition, there is a mix of staff working patterns, both full time and part time, with the part time varying from 0.2 FTE to 0.8 FTE. The Project Managers worked extra time for part of year 1. Much attention has been given to the structure of the project, and four cross-site groups have been formed: management, copyright, marketing and technical. The Marketing Officer and Project Secretary resigned at the end of year 1 to take up posts elsewhere. The difficulties of communication and co-ordination, and the expense involved in travelling, should not be underestimated.
Work on the eLib Project Archive has been more arduous than anticipated. Many of the projects are hesitant, for a variety of reasons, to submit files to HERON and despite early contact, starting in May 1998 when an OD/ER Concertation day was organised by SBU, files have not been forthcoming. It has been agreed by most of the projects that digitised files will be stored on their lead site server and freely given to HERON if likely to be destroyed. In most cases HERON has the bibliographic records and will be in a position to ask for files for clearance if HERON members request them. Another problem is that a large proportion of the files are not in the format now emerging as the permitted standard and special clearances would have to be sought, or redigitisation undertaken.
It has emerged that the cost of building a full industrial strength system capable of running a commercial service is likely to be higher than the costs currently built into the HERON budget. This issue will require consideration as part of the start-up costs of any commercial venture.
Estimates of the full cost of running a resource bank are proving difficult, primarily as it is difficult to judge growth. We do not yet have a clear enough idea of how many publishers might wish to deposit electronic text with HERON, and of the value of this facility to a publisher.
HERON has to judge what is in the best interests of the HE community, in balancing its relationship with the CLA on the one hand, and direct negotiation with rightsholders on the other.
Reorganisation within Blackwell’s Information Services has led to difficulty and delays in licensing activity: these should soon be resolved.
During the course of the first year, some lessons have been reinforced: the necessity of a common understanding among consortium members of the objectives of the partnership and the nature of the product, and the requirement to allow sufficient time for all staff to gain a thorough understanding of the project and its complexities, and to learn modes of working appropriate for a geographically scattered team. Above all, we are more than ever aware of the impossibility of building a service in shifting sand.
5. Future development of HERON
HERON aims to offer a one-stop-shop to those who wish to progress with on-demand and electronic reserve. While many universities are keen to pilot ereserve and use electronic text in academic departments, we believe that market penetration is likely to be low in year 2 as HEIs will view the royalty rates initially set by publishers as unacceptably high. Above all, our role must be to gather evidence so that we can attempt to influence payment models and royalty rates, as well as educate HEIs on expectation. We must recognise, however, that this will not happen overnight: a realistic time-scale (if we are fortunate) might be two years. The immediate aim must be to encourage rightsholders to sign up to digitisation mandates at all. Publishers may have been willing to participate in small scale projects in the past: the situation is now quite different, with the prospect of national availability under market conditions.
It may even be possible that rightsholders will not be able to bring prices to a level considered affordable by HEIs. Yet no one can doubt that electronic delivery of texts to students will come eventually. The breakthrough may be when sufficient text becomes available directly from publishers in electronic form: the demand for retrodigitisation will gradually tail off, though not cease; however that demand will be for less economically important texts and royalty rates will be reduced.
For the remaining two years of present project funding, HERON will now operate on a test basis, probably with a limit of 20 member HEIs: it is not sensible to spend large sums on enhancing the access system until the market is more certain.
The immediate aims for year 2 are:
a) provide service to test sites by October and January
b) build up the content of the resource bank
c) build up the database with records of copyright cleared texts
d) influence rightsholders’ payment models and rates for the benefit of HEIs and encourage additional mandates either via CLA or directly with HERON
e) improve attractiveness of the HERON product, seek new marketing opportunities and prepare revised business plan
f) influence culture in HEIs with regard to use of electronic text to support teaching and learning
It is crucial we increase the attraction of the HERON product and reach the position where we can confidently demand more realistic membership fees. JISC has agreed to underwrite the costs of the HE partners in year 2 and it is likely that some underwriting will be required in year 3. Discussions must continue over possible types of company formation, and a decision on whether or not we should seek funding for a system capable of supporting a full national service will be necessary by the beginning of year 3, to allow time for development work.
The environment will be unstable for some time to come: HERON offers a unique opportunity for rightsholders, the HE sector and Blackwell’s to test new models of distribution of texts for teaching and learning in the market place.
In the eventual business model, income from deposit of HEI-owned texts will be important. HERON should also be well placed, through its relationship with Blackwell’s, to seek revenue from various marketing initiatives (such as links to an online bookshop, and offering promotional services to academic staff on behalf of publishers). There are many avenues to explore : services to visually impaired students, some role in the National Grid for Learning and expansion into the FE market for instance represent just some of the opportunities.
HERON Annual Report 1999.
HERON Staff in Year 1
|
POSITION |
NAME |
SITE |
STATUS/fte |
|
Project Director |
Carolyn Rowlinson |
Stirling |
0.2 |
|
Project Manager (HE) |
Cathie Moir |
Stirling |
0.6 – 0.8 |
|
Project Manager (Blackwell’s) |
Ted Steele |
Oxford |
0.4 – 0.8 |
|
Technical Manager
|
George Pitcher NOT YET APPOINTED |
Edinburgh |
1 0.5 (VACANCY) 0.25 (VACANCY) |
|
Copyright Officer (HE) |
Helen Pickering |
Stirling |
1 |
|
Copyright Executive |
Emma Mapp |
Oxford |
1 |
|
HEI officer |
Lynda Agili |
London |
0.5 |
|
Marketing Officer |
David McMenemy (Left July ’99) |
Stirling |
1 (VACANCY) |
|
Marketing Executive |
Marianne Jacques |
Oxford |
0.5 |
|
Admin Assistant |
Carole MacKay (Left July ’99) |
Stirling |
0.5 (VACANCY) |
|
Ecommerce team |
Piotr Murasik |
Oxford |
Varied |
|
Charles Lambert |
Oxford |
||
|
Plus others |
HERON Annual Report 1999.
John Akeroyd South Bank University
Roger Bowen Blackwell Retail Ltd
Peter Kemp (Chair) University of Stirling
Chris Pinder Napier University
Carolyn Rowlinson University of Stirling
Phil Sykes University of Huddersfield
Suzanne Wilson-Higgins Blackwell Information Services Ltd
In attendance:
Cathie Moir (Secretary & University of Stirling
Project Manager)
Ted Steele Blackwell Retail Ltd
Copyright/Publisher relations Advisers
Mark Bide Mark Bide & Associates
Charles Oppenheim Loughborough University
Blackwell’s Sponsor
Anthony Thompson Blackwell’s
HERON Annual Report 1999.
Conferences and Exhibitions attended
Roger Bowen made a presentation on HERON at the Annual Conference of the College & University Booksellers’ Group of the Booksellers’ Association, Harrogate, March 1999
http://www.stir.ac.uk/infoserv/heron
HERON Annual Report 1999.